


Weather to Fly

by gallifreyburning



Category: Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M, Gallifreyan animal hybrids that don't involve pigs, nature cw, plant touching cw, time lord feelings cw, unsafe bird feeding practices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 23:10:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20517989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: Leela and Narvin on an assignment at Heartshaven, coping with difficult terrain, local wildlife and burgeoning feelings.





	Weather to Fly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ifailedtothinkofaname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ifailedtothinkofaname/gifts).

> This is a (slightly belated) birthday fic for [alyona](http://alyona11.tumblr.com) (aka ifailedtothinkofaname), inspired by [her adorable art of Leela and Narvin feeding ducks on Gallifrey.](https://alyona11.tumblr.com/post/186261911261/how-about-leela-and-narvin-feeding-gallifreyan) I'm not sure if this is part of the [Quiet Heart series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1183007), but it does presuppose that Romana sent Leela and Narvin to Heartshaven for some reason, and that's how _Erasure_ happened.

As a native Gallifreyan, Narvin is fully aware that his planet consists of various environmental regions. Wild Endeavor alone has dozens – deserts, mountains, veldt, high-altitude rainforests, and temperate coastal farmland. As a respectable Time Lord, Narvin has always minimized his time outside of the Citadel’s protective dome, and taken specific steps to ensure that his experience of these various climates has been largely academic.

Largely academic, that is, until this particular cloudy day at Heartshaven.

“There shouldn’t even be quicksand here, this isn’t the right sort of soil!” he whinges, shivering in the clammy afternoon. His socks and boots are a dozen muddy, muddy paces behind him, lodged in a small sinkhole. Irretrievable, full to the brim with slick, wet earth, a complete loss. Even if he could dig them out, he could never clean them properly.

“That is not quicksand,” Leela replies, failing to smother a giggle as he tries – and fails – to brush away the mud suckered to his trousers, soaking him to the knees. He only succeeds in dirtying his hands, too. “It is just mud.”

“It practically swallowed me whole!”

“Fine fine, it is _deep_ mud. You sank to your knees and panicked, that is all,” she says, adjusting their supply rucksack across her back. “Romana will be grateful to know you have found the softest spot on her ancestral lands. Do you want the data pad, so you can make note of it in our inventory?”

He ignores her sarcasm and wiggles his toes, shuddering at the cold squish of earth between them. The sensation is torment. “I can’t walk all the way back to the house barefoot.”

“You prefer to stay here in the vineyard, and sleep under the stars?” she gasps, delighted.

“Good gods, no!” he says, planting his muddy fists on his hips and shaking his right foot, as if attempting an aggressive Hokey-Pokey. Wet earth splatters Leela’s boots, and she steps back with a _tsk_. “You’ll just have to go find a – a skimmer, or something, and come back to get me.”

“A working skimmer? In this abandoned, burned-down estate?” She’s laughing again, not bothering to hide it this time. “It would be quicker for me to carry you back to the house. Fear not, fragile Time Lord, I shall save you from nature and the elements.”

Narvin’s cheek twitches and he studies her for a second longer than he should, genuinely considering the offer. When she tightens the rucksack straps and takes a half-step forward with her arms out, as if to sweep him off his (bare, filthy) feet, a vivid image flashes through his mind’s eye, of being slung over her shoulders or – even worse – draped across her arms like a bride. Breathless embarrassment seizes hold of him before Leela can, and he steps back and holds out his hands in refusal. “That pond we passed earlier is nearby, isn’t it? Somewhere due east?”

“Just beyond that hedge,” Leela agrees.

“Heartshaven is more charcoal than house at this point, I can’t imagine the bathing facilities are more sanitary than rinsing my feet in the pond,” he groans, rubbing his forehead. She chuckles again, and he realizes he’s just smeared mud across his own face.

“I shall lead the way, and warn you of any more mud puddles,” she says, whirling around and practically skipping away, around the side of the nearest overgrown grapevine.

With a last, wistful look at his ruined boots in the mud, he strides after her in something like a speedwalk. The soil is moist and gritty underfoot, the sensory experience a form of pure existential torment. Up ahead, the unkept vineyard gives way to a pebbled path; maybe he _should _take Leela up on her offer of carrying him across this nightmare landscape.

“Leela, wait!”

She doesn't.

The pond, which they hadn’t gotten around to examining and cataloguing yet, turns out to be remarkably pristine. Rich red grass forms a thick fringe around the banks, and silver-tipped trees rustle in the breeze. A handful of komodo-ducks float lazily in the water, naturally dangerous but unperturbed by the appearance of company. By the time Narvin catches up, gingerly high-stepping and muttering curses at each piece of gravel and splinter that touches the tender soles of his feet, Leela is already seated at the water’s edge. He comes to a stop, his breath caught in his chest, his pain briefly forgotten. Her head is tipped up as she tracks cotton-ball clouds across the sky, long auburn hair spilling down her shoulders. She contrasts beautifully against the pale blue water, and her pink fingers spread like roots into the red grass as she lounges, as if she has made herself one with the planet itself.

He’s visited the Citadel’s art galleries on a handful of occasions, mostly to conduct clandestine meetings with intelligence sources, in the course of his CIA duties. He only ever paid marginal attention to the paintings on the walls, as an acceptable place to direct his gaze while discussing political schemes with his Monan or Phaidon or Nekkistani contacts. As a marginally respectable Patrex, he can list off every last notable Gallifreyan artist since Rassilon’s rule, and is passing familiar with how a paintbrush works. But he’s never been one to embrace the artistic side of his education; he didn’t mind leaving those things behind, after he graduated the Academy.

But this moment in this place – with this woman in particular – is a natural work of art, a landscape masterpiece. For the first time in several lives, he wishes for a drawing pad instead of a data pad. His index finger moves against his thigh, absently tracing an echo of Leela’s silhouette.

“Surely you are not more afraid of water than you were of the mud?” she says, throwing a cheeky look over her shoulder.

He starts, blinks, clenches his hand into a fist to stop it moving.

He’d been so distracted, he forgot about the fact that he’s half swamp monster, soaked in filth.

“Just thought we should make sure those komodo-ducks aren’t the carnivorous kind.”

“Komodo-ducks? Is that what these creatures are called?” Leela turns back to look at the animals, with their feathery bodies and long, powerful talons dangling below the surface. Narvin comes to stand beside her, toes squishing in the grass. The unpleasant sensation has faded to the edge of his awareness, his attention occupied by other, more important things. “They eat meat?”

“Some do. Depends on the plumage color.”

“You cannot tell if these are the dangerous ones?” He shrugs, unwilling to admit it aloud. Leela opens the rucksack and pulls out a bag, part of their picnic supplies brought along for their day out in Heartshaven’s grounds. “Then we shall give them an offering of bread, and see if they accept it, or if they attack you instead.”

Before he can protest that provoking them is a bad idea – really quite irresponsible – she has already taken a slice and torn it into pieces, flinging several at the animals. They dive toward the bread with gusto, making delighted little hissing quacks as they go.

“Not carnivorous, then,” he murmurs, reluctantly stepping into the water. Leaning down, he plunges his hands into the water and works his fingers over his trouser hem, cleaning off the mud, rolling them up so he can scrub the dirt from his calves and ankles for good measure. He waits for a sarcastic comment from Leela, silently prepares a variety of equally sarcastic replies, but to his surprise she stays suspiciously quiet. When he finishes digging the mud from beneath his fingernails and splashes it from his face, he hazards a glance in her direction. 

She's staring at him with the same appreciative eye he studied her a moment ago: as if enjoying a work of art. _Admiring_ him as he splashes around, his uniform soaked and clinging. She blinks, meeting his gaze as pink blossoms across her cheeks; he swallows, unconsciously pulling his shoulders back. In fact, he bears a slight resemblance to the waterfowl paddling around behind him, with their puffed-out chests and bright, calculating eyes. 

"They still seem hungry. Are you not worried, that they might want a nibble of your flesh?" Leela says, nodding vaguely in his direction, probably talking about the komodo-ducks. She lifts the bread bag into the air, and he steps out of the pond to take it from her. 

"Better safe than sorry." He tears the corner from a piece of bread and throws it in a perfectly calculated arc, so it lands just in front of the nearest komodo-duck. It's gobbled up in a heartsbeat.

Grinning, Leela takes her own piece and tears it, too. "You could not throw so precisely, three times in a row."

"You don't think so? I suppose you could hit that mark five times in a row?"

"A dozen." She flicks her piece in an easy gesture, and it lands in front of the delighted komodo-duck again. "Whoever loses by missing first, must do the winner's bidding."

Narvin takes a moment to aim, and then pitches his next piece. "What, you mean the loser will cook dinner or something?"

She turns her eyes to the pond, one side of her mouth quirking up into a knowing half-smile. Her next piece of bread hits the mark, as well. "Or something."

The air is cool, the breeze slow but steady, the rainstorm only just over. In his wet uniform, Narvin should be shivering; instead, a distinct warmth prickles his fingers and toes and lips.

"All right." He throws another piece, brown bread bobbling on the water for a split-second before a komodo-duck gobbles it up. He decides he'll throw three more before he intentionally misses the target, to find out what Leela's _or something_ might be. 


End file.
